


It's a Date

by servantofclio



Series: Zoe Ryder [3]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Dating, F/M, her name is not sara though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-10-31 03:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10890969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: First date? sort of? They can attempt to have one, anyway.Liam/Ryder dating and romance short fics. Probably to be added to as I get more ideas or prompts.





	1. Footsie

Zoe Ryder likes the tavetaan. Aya, as a whole, has been pretty eye-opening. (Aya, eye-opening. Heh. She’s got to tell someone that one.) Now that she and the crew are allowed to visit, and after seeing Havarl and Voeld, she gets why Aya’s so special, special enough that the angara take turns living there. It’s not just that the planet is beautiful (this part of it, anyway). It’s beautiful and _comfortable_. Lived in. Here in secret, shielded by the Scourge, it’s a place where you can just... live. Where even the Pathfinder can relax for an hour or two.

Overhead, broad-leafed plants scatter sunlight and shade. The burble of rushing water from the waterfalls all around them mingles with the buzz of conversation. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she’s at some garden or sidewalk cafe back on Earth.

She doesn’t, because that kind of nostalgia’s not going to her or anyone else any good. Besides, that way she’d miss out on all the people-watching. Dozens of angara around, talking, gesturing, drinking out of tall icy glasses, eating from bowls of fruit. She glances around, watching them out of the corners of her eyes, trying not to stare, counting up how many different colors of angaran skin she sees around her. Greenish blue to pinkish violet and everywhere in between, it seems like.

Across the table, Liam’s talking, too, explaining how he’s been trying to make some angaran contacts. A couple introductions from Jaal, a little chatting up the mechanics who helped them with repairs to the _Tempest_ after their first landing, this and that. There’s a responsible, or maybe just anxious, part of her brain that wants to tell him to be careful, don’t offend anyone, don’t make any promises they can’t keep.

But when she drifts back to watching him, he’s so animated. Smiling, talking with his hands as much as his mouth, skin practically glowing in the occasional glint of sunlight. She smiles at him, relaxing, and decides to let it go.

There are angara watching them, too. Most of them not very subtle about it, a couple of people looking and pointing and then tapping their companions on the shoulder. She can’t really blame them. They’ve got to be trying to figure out the weird hairy aliens as much as anyone else is.

“I thought this was supposed to be a date,” she says, when Liam pauses for breath. Sneaks a foot across the space and rubs the side of his ankle.

His eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah? Yeah. It was. Is, I mean. Sorry about the thing earlier...”

She shrugs and sips her drink. “Eh, let’s let that go.” She’s not entirely sure she likes what she’s drinking. The flavor is a weird mixture of sweet and herbal, almost but not quite medicinal. But the angara have straws, so she’s taking a totally juvenile pleasure in slurping the stuff up through her straw. “But we could, you know. Talk about date stuff.” Idly, she runs her foot up and down his calf. Which is a nice, solid, muscular calf.

“Yeah?” He props an elbow on the table, leaning forward. “What kind of date stuff?”

“Yeah, umm...” She tries to remember her last first date and shrugs. “I don’t know, what do people normally talk about on a first date?”

“Think we’ve got ‘what do you do for a living’ covered.”

“Yeah, true. Uh, do you come here often?” She laughs, wrinkling her nose. Keeps rubbing her foot against his.

Liam grins back. Under the table, his free foot finds her ankle. “Nope, never been before.”

She breaks down giggling. “Um, I don’t know? Families?”

He’s laughing, too. “We might both start crying.”

“Yeah, that’s no good for the mood. What are you drinking? What the hell are we both drinking, for that matter?”

“Um... some kind of... fruit juice? Herbal tea? I honestly have no idea.” Liam shakes his head, still smiling. “Let’s put it on the list of things to ask Jaal.”

“You have a list?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “Mostly I ask him when I think of ‘em, but if he’s not around to ask, then yeah. Okay, I’ve got one. Last vid you saw?”

“Oh man.” She takes a long sip of the drink while she tries to remember. “Zach and I went to the latest Blasto a couple weeks before we left. Frankly, kind of subpar, if you ask me.”

“The action wasn’t bad, but the series has gone downhill since they switched directors.”

Perfect. Zoe grins. A normal, dumb conversation to have in this gorgeous place like regular people. She leans forward while they trade complaints about quick cuts and special effects, lazily playing footsie games under the table. Pretty good first date, all around.


	2. Movie date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do assorted evenings spent watching vids count as dates? Then this might be another date.

On the screen in front of them, the ragtag team’s plan is set into motion, with a chain reaction of explosions all around the warehouse where they were meeting the crime boss.  
  
“Ryder, check it out!” He nudges her with his elbow. “Word is they didn’t all proper permits before—”  
  
“Ngghhhstop,” she mumbles.  
  
Liam stops talking, tearing himself away from the explosions on-screen to turn and look at her.  
  
Ryder’s not just zoned out, she’s actually fallen asleep on the couch. She’s all scrunched down, her spine molded into the curve of the couch, head on the back cushion, arms slack and hands open at her sides. Her eyes are shut and her mouth’s half-open. If he listens carefully, he can hear a little whistling noise coming from her. Not quite a snore, but almost.  
  
She’s ridiculously fucking cute.  
  
“Ryder. Hey, Ryder.”  
  
She grumbles, scrunching up further. Her nose and forehead wrinkle, too. That’s even cuter.  
  
Liam snaps a pic with his omni-tool, before nudging her again. “Ryder. Wake up. You’re missing the vid.”  
  
“Lemme ‘lone,” she mumbles.  
  
“You want to just sleep here on the couch?”  
  
She cracks her eyes open, frowning and squinting in the light from the screen. “Yes.”  
  
Liam chuckles. “Fine. You don’t want to go sleep in a real bed, suit yourself.” He sleeps on the couch himself sometimes, it’s comfortable enough, all around. “Going to get a stiff neck like that, though.”  
  
She grumbles some more and aims a weak punch at Liam’s arm, which he easily dodges, laughing. Ryder ends up tilting toward him, cheek mashed into the cushions. “I’ll show you a stiff neck,” she mumbles.  
  
“That doesn’t even make sense.” He reaches over and ruffles her hair. “You going to be comfortable there?”  
  
“’M fine.” She nestles into the cushions, tucking her feet up onto the couch. “That’s nice.”  
  
“What, this?” He pets her hair a little more, smoothing it out.  
  
“Yeah.” She yawns and scrunches her eyes shut again. “You can keep doing that.”  
  
Well. He keeps doing it, then, running his fingers through the smooth, straight locks.  
  
Mostly straight, at least. Ryder keeps her hair short, but it’s growing out. Behind her ear, it’s starting to get a bit of a wave, and it’s almost down past her earlobe. He wonders what she’d look like with it grown out. Hard to imagine; she certainly looks great with it like this.  
  
She sighs, her face relaxing, tilting so she’s almost leaning into his shoulder. Liam grins and keeps stroking Ryder’s hair while she sleeps, until the closing credits roll.


	3. Post-bar-fight date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam catches up with Ryder after her bar brawl with Drack. Is it a date? Sort of. 
> 
> (Set considerably later than the previous two, the relationship is now well-established.)

Andromeda has taught Liam to expect the unexpected, but he’s still surprised when he walks into Kralla’s Song to find the floor strewn with groaning people, while Drack and Zoe Ryder are propped up against the bar, all smiles.

“What,” he says, surveying the damage.

“Heyyyyy, Liam!” Ryder waves at him frantically, turns to drop something on the bar, and nearly trips over a downed turian. Liam, crossing to meet her, reaches out a hand to keep her upright.

“You made it,” she says, beaming up at him.

Liam does a double-take as he gets a good look at her. She’s got a black eye, a split lip, and a _fantastic_ purple swelling on the right side of her jaw. Looks like what she put down on the bar was the ice she’d been holding to her face.

“Missed all the fun, though,” Drack drawls.

“Looks like it,” Liam replies, looking around. “Seriously, what the hell happened here?”

“Just a good old-fashioned bar fight,” Drack says. Behind the bar, Umi sniffs loudly and rolls her eyes.

“It was great!” Ryder’s regained her balance. “You should have seen it, this guy was all blah blah, get out of my face, and I just --”  

As she proceeds to narrate, with a lot of hand-waving and acting things out, Liam isn’t sure whether to be more impressed or alarmed. Ryder’s a good shot, deadly with tech and biotics both. But. A fight like this is no tech, no biotics, no weapons, no combat hardsuit, just her in her civvies. Plus -- he glances around and makes some estimates -- most of these guys have at least twenty centimeters and forty kilograms on her. Ryder’s not exactly a little slip of a thing. She’s fast and packs a lot of muscle for her size, but her size is still on the small side for a human. So the fact that she accounted for a non-negligible number of the bodies on the floor is, frankly, both alarming and hot.

“Cool,” he says, as her description winds down. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, only superficial damage,” she says.

Looking her over, he spots scraped knuckles. Probably a few more bruises under her clothing. But she’s grinning fit to split her lip again. “Sorry I missed the show.”

“Me too.” She laughs, propping an elbow on the bar. Up close, she smells like whiskey, which explains a lot.

“Wouldn’t have figured you for the kind to get drunk and start a bar fight,” he says. The defeated crowd are starting to pick themselves up now, wincing and grumbling.

“I’m not really drunk! It’s mostly adrenalin,” she protests.

“Uh-huh,” he says dubiously.

“Combat high,” Drack says sagely. “Best part of a bar fight.”

“If you say so,” Liam says. “Can’t help but think you’re a bad influence, old man.”

Drack lets out one of his enormous krogan belly laughs. Ryder just smirks and grabs Liam’s hand, palm to palm, lacing their fingers together. She’s also giving him a _look_ , full of intention.

He says, “So you called me here because...” like he doesn’t know what might be on her mind.

Ryder shrugs. “Just wanted to see your face. Wanna get out of here?”

Seems like he’d be an idiot to say no, wouldn’t it? “Sure thing. Take it easy, Drack.”

Drack waves them off, chuckling, and returns to his drink.

They exit the bar hand in hand, which makes Liam just the slightest bit edgy. Normally he wouldn’t care if anyone saw them together, but on Kadara, anything could be used against a person. He keeps a nervous eye out to see if anyone’s paying too much attention to them.

If Ryder’s nervous, too, she doesn’t show it. She just walks along talking about normal things — what mods are for sale in the market, what color they’re painting the Nomad next — and then without warning she tugs on his arm and pulls him into an out-of-the-way corner between warehouses.

“Hey there,” she says with a grin.

“Hey there, yourself,” Liam replies, amused. Ryder looks so pleased with herself. “So is this a date, then?”

She bounces up on her toes to plant a whiskey-flavored kiss on his mouth, but breaks it off almost immediately. “Ouch.” Gingerly, she dabs at the sore side of her mouth.

Liam bursts out laughing. “Not quite what you planned?”

“Sure, laugh at your wounded girlfriend,” she says, mock-scowling and then wincing and patting her mouth again. “Ow.”

The word _girlfriend_ makes his heart race, but he says, “You were just telling me how awesome it all was,” and kisses her on the forehead.

“It was, but I guess it would have been more awesome if the one guy hadn’t hit me in the face.”

He kisses her on the nose next. She scrunches her face up as he does. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for bits that don’t hurt,” he tells her. Catches her free hand and kisses her there, above the split skin of her knuckles. “Unless you want me to kiss it better.”

Her breath catches. Her eyes, fixed on his, are dark and serious.

He kisses her again on the mouth, carefully, on the uninjured side. “Or maybe you should go back to icing that.”

She wrinkles her nose again. “I like the ‘kissing it better’ plan better.”

“Yeah, but ice actually works. Mostly.” He shakes his head. “Lexi’s going to go ballistic when she gets a look at you.”

Ryder sighs. “She so is. Maybe we can sneak past her?”

“We? I’m not the one who got into a bar fight,” he says, teasing.

“I’ll make it worth your while?” She says hopefully.

No doubt about that. She is always worth it.

“Got any other sore spots I should know about?” he asks.

“Why? You want to ice ‘em, or kiss ‘em better?” she asks, squeezing his hands.

“Little of both?”

“Works for me,” she says with a grin.

She lets go of his hand as they walk through the busy, cluttered docks, but the warmth of her grip seems to linger the whole time.


	4. Dancing date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Let's meet up at Vortex once you're done with a shitty staff meeting" is totally a date.

Ryder shows up at Vortex without a smile or a word for anyone, stalks up to the bar, and throws back the first drink Dutch hands her.

“That good a meeting, huh,” Liam says, watching her with a small degree of alarm. Dutch’s experiments have been known to put people on the floor.

She accepts another shot glass and moves over to join Liam before drinking it. “Yeah. It was great. Either I’m doing everything wrong, or Tann’s kissing my ass. At length.”

When she scowls like that, her jaw juts out, and she starts to look like her father, just a touch. Unnerving, that.

“Plus, all four of them got into an argument about allocation of resources and communications with the angara that took a solid hour.” She downs the shot and wrinkles her nose, shaking her head. Her foot taps rapidly against the leg of her stool.

“Sounds delightful. No wonder the Nexus didn’t accomplish much before we got here.” No blame to the people on the ground, but the Nexus leadership is something else again.

“Yeah. I might have to go to the angaran ambassador and apologize for Tann.” Ryder looks glum, her lower lip protruding, and then shakes herself. “I need to move. Wanna dance?”

Dutch, or more likely Anan, has been having music in lately to get the crowd going. Recorded stuff at first, but some nights it’s been live music, some instruments packed up and shipped all the way from the Milky Way, others smashed together out of spare parts and electronics. Either way, Liam’s impressed. But: “Not much of a dancer, Ryder.”

“Suit yourself.” She flashes him a smile and stands up from her seat, pulling off her jacket as she heads over to the space that’s cleared for dancing. Can barely be called a dance floor, really. There’s a few people over there already, mostly humans. One very energetic salarian, long arms windmilling everywhere.

The music’s loud and rhythmic and Ryder throws herself right in. No surprise, that. Legs pumping, head bobbing, hips swinging. 

Liam can’t say whether she’s a good dancer or not. What she’s doing with her arms isn’t exactly graceful, maybe, but she dances like she doesn’t care what anyone thinks. The thin top she’s wearing leaves her arms and shoulders bare, showing off a nice bit of muscle, and clings, putting the angles of her shoulder blades and the swell of her breasts on display as she turns. Her skin glows under the lights and a sheen of sweat.

He watches her whirl and swing for a couple of songs, nursing his drink, before muttering “the hell with it,” and going to join her.

No one really cares what you look like dancing, right?

Ryder sees him coming, and lights up with a smile. That does it for any self-consciousness. She reaches out for his arm just as the song ends and the band decides it’s time for something slower.

 A couple asari get up from their tables and join the dancers, leaning on each other. A human woman grabs her turian friend’s hand and drags him in. Ryder looks at Liam with a smile and a shrug and reaches for his hand.

Been a while, but right, it works like this: one arm around her shoulders, feeling her warm and close, how the muscles of her back and shoulders shift as she moves. The other hand holding hers, firm but not too tight. The beat of the music pulsing through the floor and the air, lights dimming a little. Nothing complicated, one foot and then another. Not enough room here for anything fancy. Plenty of room for drawing in closer, moving together, falling into rhythm until it feels like they’re breathing in sync, like maybe even their heartbeats match. Until nothing else matters but the heat of her presence and the the way she feels in the curve of his arm.

He bends down as the music ends to say in her ear: “Want to get out of here?”

A smile spreads across her face. “Thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
